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Report: PAX East Attendee Attempts to Steal Breach

At PAX East 2010, a man reportedly attempted to steal the code for Breach, the new multiplayer shooter from Atomic Games, which I had a chance to play before the show.

A man had been seen hanging around the Breach booth on the show floor with a laptop. He was confronted by Atomic quality assurance members before running away and being caught.

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David Tractenberg, a PR representative speaking on Atomic's behalf, told Joystiq that the man had copied around 14MB of the 2GB game to his laptop before being caught. "The suspect spent four hours in jail, and his laptops, modded Xbox 360, modded PSP, modded DS and XMP3 were confiscated by police," according to Joystiq.

The suspect told Joystiq that he was merely attempting to get Internet access by utilizing Atomic Games' ethernet connection and was suspected of stealing the code because he had the Xbox Neighborhood application running. He later admitted to attempting to steal the game to "play it with [his] friends," according to Tractenberg.

The suspect, Justin D. May (20), posted bail after being arrested, but failed to show up to court today for his arraignment. A warrant has been issued for his arrest. Joystiq, which has May's Xbox Live Gamertag spotted him (or someone using his account) playing Modern Warfare 2 earlier today.

The charges that May faces are serious as he is accused of attempted theft of trade secrets (intellectual property) valued at around $6 million. This incident could potentially hurt publisher and developer participation in future Penny Arcade Expo's (or any other conventions open to the public).

Blizzard Entertainment does not allow laptops on the show floor at its own BlizzCon fan convention as it allows the public to play early versions of its upcoming games like StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3. Don't be surprised if you can't bring your laptop into PAX 2010 or PAX East 2011.